anders_CPH said:

The distinction that resolves most of these threads is between what is true on average and what is true for one person.

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. The honest answer is that the effect is real, the magnitude is contested, and the individual variation is larger than either. Those three things can all be true at once, and most arguments here are two people holding different parts of that.

One concrete data point for the thread. The boring version of this is the one that works, and the boring version is: measure a baseline, change one variable, wait, measure again under the same conditions. Nobody wants that answer and it is still the answer.

Following on from anders_CPH — and this may be the naive question:

Did your prescriber agree with that reading, and if not what was their objection?

Dr.NateNeph said:

The boring version of this is the one that works, and the boring version is: measure a baseline, change one variable, wait, measure again under the…

This is where I part company with the consensus forming above. I think the framing smuggles in the conclusion. Ask it the other way round and the obvious answer reverses, which usually means the question is doing the work.

OP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.

Follow-up — I binned the frozen one. Aggregation does not undo itself and I was not going to inject a maybe.